The End of the Knightmare

The Knights saga, as befitting their tumultuous 1995-96 season, came to an abrupt
and angry end.

The Olympics were coming to Atlanta for the Summer of 1996, and the city was abuzz
with new plans for new arenas, new sporting palaces, and for once, there was money
to fund all these grand schemes. And the Knights made no secret of it: They wanted
a piece of the pie.

Forces bigger than the Knights, though, had taken note of the hockey renaissance
the IHL team had fostered in Atlanta, and with the NHL set to expand itself to 30
teams over five years, it seemed only natural that in the time it would take to
build a new hockey arena, a new NHL franchise would rise in Atlanta to fill it.

To make way for the new arena, the Omni would be razed. That left the Knights in
a precarious position, and team management delivered an ultimatum to the office
of then-Mayor Bill Campbell: Give us a voice in the new arena plans, or the Knights
would bolt.

The city did not act on the Knights ultimatum, although Campbell's office professed
to be stunned. More cynical observers would have said that the Knights management
simply wanted to be able to go ahead with life after the Omni wherever it would
take them, and Campbell wanted them out of the way quietly to appease the eventual
owners of the new NHL franchise.

The Knights franchise relocated to Quebec City, a town the NHL
Nordiques had recently jilted on their way to becoming the Colorado Avalanche. The
franchise played on for two unremarkable years as the Quebec Rafales to indifferent
crowds. A number of Knights players remained with the Rafales, but most scattered
to other teams, other leagues, or to Europe. Concurrently, the Nashville Knights
relocated to Pensacola and rechristened themselves the Pensacola Ice Pilots. Both
teams changed uniforms and color schemes, leaving no visible trace of the Atlanta
Knights logo, mascot, or motif behind. The Rafales succumbed after the 1997-98 season;
the Ice Pilots remained active in the ECHL until 2007 under a number of
different ownership groups. The most recognizable survivor was Sir
Hat Trick, who was reassigned to the ECHL Birmingham Bulls (also owned by the Knights'
Berkman/Felix group).

Atlanta labored on for three years without a professional hockey team. Atlanta fans
had to make a four-hour drive to see the ECHL's Augusta Lynx (folded 2008) or Birmingham Bulls
(folded 2003),
or a ninety-minute drive for the CHL's Macon Whoopee (folded 2002). The puck would not drop in
Atlanta again until 1998 when the new Atlanta Thrashers took the ice. The Thrashers
never acknowledged the Knights franchise, or even any of the contributions
the Knights made to hockey in Atlanta. The exception is a single goal frame the
Knights used at the Omni, which hangs in the Philips Arena gift shop. Only one former
Knight has appeared on the Thrashers' roster, forward
Glen Metropolit
. The only recognizable member of the
Knights organization active with the Thrashers was radio-TV play-by-play broadcaster
Dan Kamal, who became the Thrashers radio play-by-play announcer in the middle of
the 1999-2000 season (anyone at Thrashers HQ care to admit to hiring Scott Ferrall
any more?). The Thrashers, of course, were sold to a thoroughly incompetent and underfinanced group, who
abandoned the team to relocation to Winnipeg in 2010.

In 2003, the ECHL added the Gwinnett Gladiators, giving fans another option.
The Gladiators have held "Atlanta Knights throwback games," in which the
Gladiators don a version of the Knights uniform. By and large, however,
the Gladiators actively shunned a number of the Knights' traditions, such as
shouting "Knights!" during the anthem.